Amreekiya Read online

  Amu Nasser wasn’t above it, though. When I first came to live here, he cast his judgment about my mother: being involved with a bad woman had pushed Baba over the edge and made him crazy and useless. Amu Nasser also didn’t like me to ever talk about my mother, especially in front of Hanan—as if Mom’s immorality might rub off on her from my words.

  How could Amu Nasser judge? At least Mom wasn’t wrecking someone’s home (not that there was much to wreck here). At least she took care of her child when she could, unlike Amtu Samia who lay in bed all day, lost in her depression, leaving a child to take care of her house and letting her own children practically run wild.

  Once I came back from my thoughts, I read the back of the picture, clichés that made my nose wrinkle in disgust. At the end she wrote, “I do for you what your wife can’t and won’t do, habibi.”

  I put the picture back in Amu’s briefcase just the way I found it, but the image kept sneaking up on me for the rest of the week, and I had to stop myself from cringing each time.

  By the middle of January, Amtu Samia’s father was close to death from Alzheimer’s and old age, so she went to Jordan with one of her friends to see him for a month. Amu Nasser said he couldn’t get the time off work, and he didn’t want to have to buy the plane tickets for all us kids to go. Rasheed and I were teenagers, and I could take care of Hanan. I already did that while Amtu was here, anyway.

  I basked in the time without Amtu home watching her soap operas on satellite TV and berating me for every little thing. Amu Nasser and Rasheed were hardly here, and Hanan was old enough not to be a ton of work anymore.

  Suddenly, though, after Amtu Samia had been gone a week, I had an epiphany during a class discussion on Jane Eyre. Someone said something about Rochester’s crazy wife basically being absent, so he has no problem bringing Jane into the house, and I realized that Amu Nasser was going to bring that woman into the house. Maybe he already had her there now, while we were all at school.

  At first I was appalled, then excited. I had a half day every third Wednesday of the month and felt certain that Amu had no idea of that; I would be surprised if he even remembered I was in high school now. I usually took the school bus, and since I went to a school about fifteen miles from the house, I was dropped off at the bus stop at two. Combined with the walk, I’d be home around two-thirty. They’d already be gone by then, because Rasheed would be home within an hour, and I was sure Amu would bring this woman home on his lunch break. He worked just four miles from the house, and that was the only time none of us kids would be around.

  I had to find a way to get home earlier. I had made friends with two girls, but they were both my age, so they couldn’t drive yet. But there was Yusef. Sometimes I spent my lunch with him, or he’d spend his with me and my friends. He had a license and a junky car that broke down every few weeks. When it was working, he offered me rides, but I refused each time. He had given me a ride from Sana’s house the summer before and dropped me off at the end of the block, but even then, I saw Imm Samir, one of our neighbors from across the street, a moment after I got out of his car. She said hi to me, and we made polite conversation for a while. I couldn’t tell if she just saw me get out of a boy’s car. A couple weeks passed, and I figured she probably didn’t see anything, because I knew she’d say something to Amtu Samia right away. Still, I’d better not take the chance again.

  In a second those concerns vanished. I hated asking for things, and I had no explanation for why I wanted to go home early on Wednesday, but luckily Yusef accepted right away with no questions.

  Yusef drove fast and got me there in less than twenty minutes. He parked the car at the end of the block and kissed me on the cheek. He moved his lips to mine. I backed away before we kissed, but my lips tingled with anticipation. We had an awkward silence, not making eye contact. I leaned over and kissed his cheek, but that wasn’t enough. He gently pivoted my head and kissed my lips. I pushed him away from me. “No, I don’t want to do that!” I got out of the car and slammed the door. “You better not follow me.”

  Though I was tempted to run to make sure I didn’t miss Amu and his girlfriend, I walked so I wouldn’t stand out. When I reached the driveway, I saw the Acura that Amu drove. My heart beat in my head and chest. He was home! I had packed him a big lunch in the morning, so he had no reason to be here. No one was in the living room, but I heard voices and footsteps upstairs. I wondered if I should go up there or not. The room Hanan and I shared was downstairs, but I wanted him to know that I was here. I wanted proof that he had a woman here. I guess they were so absorbed in what they were doing, they didn’t even hear me come through the front door.

  I walked to the kitchen and got something to eat, momentarily distracted by my thoughts of Yusef. Maybe I did lead him on by asking him for a ride—boys always had the idea that if we initiated anything with them, it meant we wanted to make out or have sex—though he should have realized he assumed wrong when I turned from his kiss. But even if he seemed nice, Yusef was still a man and would do whatever he wanted regardless of anyone else’s feelings. I felt stupid for being blinded by his charm, especially while I was in the middle of trying to catch Amu in his lies.

  I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t realize I had left the jam jar close to the edge of the counter, and I elbowed it when I picked up the peanut butter. It fell to the floor and sprayed my pants and the bottom of my shirt, even though I jumped away as soon as I knew I wouldn’t be able to catch it. The noise was too loud to be ignored, and I heard Amu charging down the stairs. From the corner of my eye, I saw Amu look toward the front door. He thought someone was trying to break in the house. My lips trembled as I stifled laughter.

  I had scared him.

  And now I would shame him.

  “It’s me, Amu,” I called out after a few seconds. “I broke the jam jar.”

  His head whirled to the kitchen before his body did, and he saw me squatting and picking up the big glass pieces. He charged toward me like he was still after a thief, his brown eyes bright and enormous. “What are you doing home, Isra? You should be at school, not breaking things in the house!”

  His temper was out of character. Amtu Samia was the one who flew off the handle over broken jars and dishes, not Amu. “I have a half day today. I just came home and made a snack.”

  He stared at me a few more seconds with his arms crossed. “Clean the mess and go to Imm Samir’s to tell her she will not have to pick up Hanan and watch her today after school.”

  I nodded. Trying to get me out of the house. That woman must be inside. “Okay, I’ll call Imm Samir.”

  “No, she only lives across the street.”

  “Yeah, but I need to hand-wash my clothes soon so the jam won’t stain.” His wife was stingy enough about getting me any clothes, even the ones from the bargain stores and thrift shops.

  He was at a loss. He needed me out of the house. His lunch break was probably going to end soon. He must have already been home for a long time. “You will at least pick up Hanan, himara?” As if that was his concern.

  “Yeah.”

  “And make sure to tell Imm Samir.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He left and walked back up the stairs. I threw the glass in the garbage and went to the laundry room. There was a window that showed one side of the driveway, and if I tilted my head, I could see Amu’s car. More footsteps, going down the stairs, I was sure. The front door opened. My heart beat inside my throat, and I craned my neck to see who was leaving the house. She wore a long, flowery skirt and a black coat that practically drowned her in fabric, and she looked so young and tiny that I thought she might be a different woman, but when she turned around, her face confirmed her identity. Her lips were pursed, making more lines around her mouth. Amu was saying something to her, probably about pesky nieces or cousins’ daughters or whatever I was to him.

  I wondered what she was thinking then, for the whole time that she was here. Did she expect a nice, quiet afternoon a
lone with her married lover and feel pissed that I interrupted it? Did she love Amu or did she just enjoy the thrill of an illicit affair? Maybe she worked in his office. She might be a lawyer or something.

  She must have been easy, docile, desperate; those were traits any man valued in a mistress.

  Valued in a wife, too, except for the easy part.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I had imagined what Yusef’s mother looked like on several occasions. She didn’t differ from my expectations exactly. I thought she would wear a hijab over her hair and a jilbab on her body, because Yusef said she was conservative. She was only about five-one or five-two, with a slightly weathered brown face, thick eyebrows, and olive-green eyes like Yusef’s. She gave me a tight bear hug and pulled me down by the neck to give me three hard kisses on both cheeks, right, left, right.

  She insisted that I should address her as Amtu Maryam, or Auntie Maryam, but I didn’t want any more fake amtus, so I stuck with the more formal Imm Yusef.

  We sat down for tea. She and Amtu talked most of the time, inquiring about each other’s families and talking about home in Palestine and, in Amtu’s case, Jordan. Amtu must have really wanted me to get married, because she was on her best behavior, listening to a poor, religious woman like Imm Yusef. Amtu didn’t wear the hijab, and she thought the women who did were haughty and ignorant. She was a modern woman, and the poor bumpkins wouldn’t keep her back and call her a sharmoota, a whore.

  “Do you read the Qur’an, Isra? Do you speak Arabic?” Imm Yusef asked, sipping tea in the dining room.

  Amtu answered ahead of me. “She can read a little. She knows some Arabic. We took her to a Sunday school to learn when she was younger.”

  I bit my lip. I only went to Sunday school for six months when I was twelve to learn how to read the Qur’an; I barely knew more than the Arabic alphabet.

  “I teach Yusef the Qur’an when he was a boy. His older sisters did as well.” She went on about how he was their only son, and he came after she had been married for over ten years. I knew he was the only boy and the youngest, but his mother worshipped him even more than I expected (and I had expected a lot).

  Later she asked about what happened to my parents, and Amtu said, “Her mother died when she was a little girl. She was Amreekiya, and my husband offered to let her live here when her father went back to Falasteen. You know how it is hard for these American kids to live back home.”

  Imm Yusef shook her head and clicked her tongue before she put her sympathetic eyes on me. “Does your father come to see you, Isra?”

  “No, not really.”

  The corners of her lips turned down in disappointment, and she shook her head again. “It is hard for men to have children alone. He has not remarried?”

  I shook my head. “He doesn’t want to.” I doubt he ever wanted to marry anyone in the first place.

  But who knows? Baba could have gone back. As far as I knew, he wasn’t a citizen, and his green card could have expired at any time. Maybe I wasn’t telling a lie.

  Now that Yusef and I were engaged, the real trials began. Planning the engagement ceremony took almost as long as I expected a wedding to. Imm Yusef drew up a long guest list and so did Amtu, including everyone she had ever met, even if I didn’t know them that well. Imm Yusef rented a party hall and was meticulous about how everything had to be set up: she wouldn’t budge on the number of tables, the amount of food she would order, and the gaudy decorations she would put up. She and her husband argued a lot about these things, mostly bickering that neither took seriously because they both knew that Imm Yusef would get her way.

  At first Amtu and I would go to Imm Yusef’s house to see the progress of her plans. After a couple of uncomfortable sessions, I ended up driving there by myself and lied about Amtu being sick. I said she had a lot of ailments, but I didn’t specify that most of them were mental.

  Imm Yusef used my visits as an investigation, because she didn’t care about my ideas for the engagement party or the wedding. Her questions usually centered on how Yusef and I met and how well we knew each other. I suppose she wanted a good Palestinian girl for her son, one who would never be alone with a man before marriage, who would never let his lips touch hers; a girl who didn’t have an American mother, who wasn’t born out of wedlock. I kept insisting that I met him at Sana’s house while her parents were there to supervise the children; we hadn’t talked much then and not at all in the last seven years. When I lied about our history, I realized that we didn’t have much at all. Less than a year of lunchtime meetings, a few car rides, two flower deliveries.

  “Have you put on hijab?”

  I never even considered it. “No.”

  “It will be very good for you.”

  “Oh, well….”

  She ran her fingers through her thick black hair, focusing more on the few gray strands she had. She didn’t wear her hijab in the house; it was only her husband and me around. “My son may have not notice you if you have the cover over your hair,” she said. She looked at her rough, dry hands. I expected her hands to be veinier, but she only had a couple of sunspots and cracks. “I started wearing after I got married. It is very good for marriage. Your husband will feel like a man.”

  If she wasn’t my future mother-in-law, I would have laughed at her. She emasculated her husband more than any other woman I knew, regardless of her hijab and jilbab.

  And it wasn’t so important that I cover my hair. No matter what, men found something to lust after in a woman. If she covered herself from head to toe, a man would drool over the way she walked or how her feet looked in closed-toe shoes, but I imagined Imm Yusef wouldn’t appreciate hearing these thoughts. “I don’t know. It hasn’t ever come up.”

  “Your amtu does not wear one, and your mother did not? What about your amtu’s mother?”

  “No, neither of them did.”

  “You must give it thought. Your husband will respect you much more.”

  She might have had a point there: she had much more control over Abu Yusef’s life than Amtu Samia had over Amu Nasser’s, but I doubted the hijab was what made the difference. Amtu was a lot more weak-willed than Imm Yusef, and Abu Yusef didn’t seem nearly as self-centered as Amu. Besides, I was enough of an outcast in American culture with my dark curly hair, olive skin (even if it was light), and dark eyes, and enough of one with Arabs because of my white mother. Why exacerbate my situation for something I didn’t believe in?

  Like the sharmoota that I was, I called Yusef as soon as I left his parents’ house that day. I was at a stoplight when he picked up, and he insisted that he didn’t care about hijab or anything like that. “Don’t you think I would have said something before? I know you don’t wear a scarf. You know, only my oldest sister Khadija wears one. The other two don’t even wear it.” He laughed. “I think Khadija just started wearing one because she doesn’t comb her hair anymore. I didn’t think you were so vain about your appearance.”

  “It’s more than appearance, Yusef.”

  “I know, I know, Isreenie. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to. Mama is just a little conservative. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  “What does she know about how we met?”

  “Uh … I don’t think she knows anything. She never asked.”

  Our engagement ceremony turned out to be even more elaborate than Imm Yusef made it sound. Gold banners on both sides displayed our names in huge letters, Yusef Isa Mubarak and Isra Munir al-Shadi, the left in English and the right in Arabic calligraphy, just over the two buffet tables. The love seat for Yusef and me had jewel encrusting and purple cushions, reminding me of those movies about royalty where they hold court over their subjects, arrayed in jewels.

  I was decked out the same way, wearing all two pieces of jewelry I owned (silver earrings and a silver bracelet) and half of Amtu’s jewelry (she was wearing the other half). Still, Imm Yusef didn’t think it was enough. Though she wanted a good girl for her son, she demanded that I w
ear a stronger shade of lipstick, kohl, and more eye shadow. She had me sit down at one of the tables and pulled the needed items out of her bag and applied them to my face herself, even after I tried to at least put the kohl on myself. “See, you are very beauty girl.” She pulled a compact out of her purse and handed it to me.

  “Yes, she is, Mama.” Yusef smiled in agreement, looking down at me.

  My appearance startled me. There was no time to look at myself before I left the house; we were running late. Amtu ironed my hair straight; Imm Yusef put a deep red on my lips, which washed me out, and a lavender eye shadow on my lids; my eyes were rimmed with thick kohl. I was as made up as an actress on an Egyptian soap opera. I didn’t look bad, but I might as well have worn a mask. I was surprised Yusef even recognized me.

  “It look good with your dress,” Imm Yusef said defensively when I stared at myself too long.

  Amtu sniffed and looked the other way.

  “She’s nervous about today.” Yusef took my free hand between his.

  “No, I think it looks good. I’m just a little pale.”

  Instantly she used both hands to pinch color into my cheeks. “Eh, do you know how many women want to have this skin?” She wrapped her arms around one of Yusef’s. “Habibi, don’t hold hand during the ceremony. Not until you give ring to each other.”

  Now she was a stage director as well as a makeup artist. Most of her time was taken up giving orders to caterers, though. Yusef held my hand as we walked up the stage, and I heard Imm Yusef whisper to Amtu, “My son is such a kind man.”

  “Let’s try this thing out.”

  I sat down, forgetting to smooth my dress. It bunched up in the back, so I stood up again to straighten it out. I apologized for my awkwardness, and he laughed. He ran his fingers through my hair. “It’s so soft, but I like the curls better.”